Baby boomers, seniors, healthcare workers, nurses, doctors, physician's assistants, elder care workers, etc, this is for you. You are on the front lines of the real inside story about the 2012 election.
I am listening to the Sunday morning talk shows and thinking about the election. My brother was a Viet Nam vet with post traumatic stress syndrome before the diagnosis was established.
I am wondering how the Veteran's Administration is going to handle the demand for medical care for the veterans of these last 2 wars that bankrupted this country. The GOP wants to scale back Medicare...will they want to scale back veteran's benefits as well?
Obama wanted to give us healthcare reform but is meeting with resistance. Basically, the resistance is resistance to change. The only thing in life that is steadfast is change. Those people who don't change with the times are doomed.
Please read this article below and understand that these troops served the country in a more enlightened time than the Nam vets did. My brother was emotionally scared beyond belief by what happened in Nam. Our country turned its back on guys like him and his comrades.
So, here we baby boomers stand needing Medicare to be whole, needing healthcare reform, remembering those guys and gals we grew up with who didn't come back from Viet Nam
and now facing the GOP agenda of cutting social programs.
Are we going to let this happen?
Please vote and remember change happens with or without your permission. Be a part of the change you want to see. This is a call to "arms" so to speak to my fellow baby boomers...
please be a part of a not so silent generation for progress and change.
Thank you,
Irene A. Masiello
Author: Paradise Costs-A Victim's Daughter Fights Back against Elder Abuse
Afterword: Bennett Blum, MD
====
AP IMPACT: Almost half of new vets seek
disability
MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Chief Medical
Writer
America's newest veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic
rate, claiming to be the most medically and mentally troubled generation of
former troops the nation has ever seen.
A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are
service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed
such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told
The Associated Press.
What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on
average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By
comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than
four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.
It's unclear how much worse off these new veterans are than their
predecessors. Many factors are driving the dramatic increase in claims — the
weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such
as concussions and PTSD. Almost one-third have been granted disability so far.
Government officials and some veterans' advocates say that veterans who might
have been able to work with certain disabilities may be more inclined to seek
benefits now because they lost jobs or can't find any. Aggressive outreach and
advocacy efforts also have brought more veterans into the system, which must
evaluate each claim to see if it is war-related. Payments range from $127 a
month for a 10 percent disability to $2,769 for a full one.
As the nation commemorates the more than 6,400 troops who died in post-9/11
wars, the problems of those who survived also draw attention. These new veterans
are seeking a level of help the government did not anticipate, and for which
there is no special fund set aside to pay.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is mired in backlogged claims, but "our
mission is to take care of whatever the population is," said Allison Hickey, the
VA's undersecretary for benefits. "We want them to have what their entitlement
is."
The 21 percent who filed claims in previous wars is Hickey's estimate of an
average for Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield. The VA has details only on
the current disability claims being paid to veterans of each war.
The AP spent three months reviewing records and talking with doctors,
government officials and former troops to take stock of the new veterans. They
are different in many ways from those who fought before them.
More are from the Reserves and National Guard — 28 percent of those filing
disability claims — rather than career military. Reserves and National Guard
made up a greater percentage of troops in these wars than they did in previous
ones. About 31 percent of Guard/Reserve new veterans have filed claims compared
to 56 percent of career military ones.
More of the new veterans are women, accounting for 12 percent of those who
have sought care through the VA. Women also served in greater numbers in these
wars than in the past. Some female veterans are claiming PTSD due to military
sexual trauma — a new challenge from a disability rating standpoint, Hickey
said.
The new veterans have different types of injuries than previous veterans did.
That's partly because improvised bombs have been the main weapon and because
body armor and improved battlefield care allowed many of them to survive wounds
that in past wars proved fatal.
"They're being kept alive at unprecedented rates," said Dr. David Cifu, the
VA's medical rehabilitation chief. More than 95 percent of troops wounded in
Iraq and Afghanistan have survived.
Larry Bailey II is an example. After tripping a rooftop bomb in Afghanistan
last June, the 26-year-old Marine remembers flying into the air, then fellow
troops attending to him.
"I pretty much knew that my legs were gone. My left hand, from what I
remember I still had three fingers on it," although they didn't seem right,
Bailey said. "I looked a few times but then they told me to stop looking."
Bailey, who is from Zion, Ill., north of Chicago, ended up a triple amputee and
expects to get a hand transplant this summer.
He is still transitioning from active duty and is not yet a veteran. Just
over half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans eligible for VA care have used it so
far.
Of those who have sought VA care:
—More than 1,600 of them lost a limb; many others lost fingers or toes.
—At least 156 are blind, and thousands of others have impaired vision.
—More than 177,000 have hearing loss, and more than 350,000 report tinnitus —
noise or ringing in the ears.
—Thousands are disfigured, as many as 200 of them so badly that they may need
face transplants. One-quarter of battlefield injuries requiring evacuation
included wounds to the face or jaw, one study found.
"The numbers are pretty staggering," said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a surgeon at
Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who has done four face transplants on
non-military patients and expects to start doing them soon on veterans.
Others have invisible wounds. More than 400,000 of these new veterans have
been treated by the VA for a mental health problem, most commonly, PTSD.
Tens of thousands of veterans suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI —
mostly mild concussions from bomb blasts — and doctors don't know what's in
store for them long-term. Cifu, of the VA, said that roughly 20 percent of
active duty troops suffered concussions, but only one-third of them have
symptoms lasting beyond a few months.
That's still a big number, and "it's very rare that someone has just a single
concussion," said David Hovda, director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research
Center. Suffering multiple concussions, or one soon after another, raises the
risk of long-term problems. A brain injury also makes the brain more susceptible
to PTSD, he said.
On a more mundane level, many new veterans have back, shoulder and knee
problems, aggravated by carrying heavy packs and wearing the body armor that
helped keep them alive. One recent study found that 19 percent required
orthopedic surgery consultations and 4 percent needed surgery after returning
from combat.
All of this adds up to more disability claims, which for years have been
coming in faster than the government can handle them. The average wait to get a
new one processed grows longer each month and is now about eight months — time
that a frustrated, injured veteran might spend with no income.
More than 560,000 veterans from all wars currently have claims that are
backlogged — older than 125 days.
The VA's benefits chief, Hickey, gave these reasons:
—Sheer volume. Disability claims from all veterans soared from 888,000 in
2008 to 1.3 million in 2011. Last year's included more than 230,000 new claims
from Vietnam veterans and their survivors because of a change in what conditions
can be considered related to Agent Orange exposure. Those complex, 50-year-old
cases took more than a third of available staff, she said.
—High number of ailments per claim. When a veteran claims 11 to 14 problems,
each one requires "due diligence" — a medical evaluation and proof that it is
service-related, Hickey said.
—A new mandate to handle the oldest cases first. Because these tend to be the
most complex, they have monopolized staff and pushed up average processing time
on new claims, she said.
—Outmoded systems. The VA is streamlining and going to electronic records,
but for now, "We have 4.4 million case files sitting around 56 regional offices
that we have to work with; that slows us down significantly," Hickey said.
Barry Jesinoski, executive director of Disabled American Veterans, called
Hickey's efforts "commendable," but said: "The VA has a long way to go" to meet
veterans' needs. Even before the surge in Agent Orange cases, VA officials "were
already at a place that was unacceptable" on backlogged claims, he said.
He and VA officials agree that the economy is motivating some claims. His
group helps veterans file them, and he said that sometimes when veterans come
in, "We'll say, 'Is your back worse?' and they'll say, 'No, I just lost my
job.'"
Jesinoski does believe these veterans have more mental problems, especially
from multiple deployments.
"You just can't keep sending people into war five, six or seven times and
expect that they're going to come home just fine," he said.
For taxpayers, the ordeal is just beginning. With any war, the cost of caring
for veterans rises for several decades and peaks 30 to 40 years later, when
diseases of aging are more common, said Harvard economist Linda Bilmes. She
estimates the health care and disability costs of the recent wars at $600
billion to $900 billion.
"This is a huge number and there's no money set aside," she said. "Unless we
take steps now into some kind of fund that will grow over time, it's very
plausible many people will feel we can't afford these benefits we overpromised."
How would that play to these veterans, who all volunteered and now expect the
government to keep its end of the bargain?
"The deal was, if you get wounded, we're going to supply this level of
support," Bilmes said. Right now, "there's a lot of sympathy and a lot of people
want to help. But memories are short and times change."
___
Online:
VA's Home Page http://www.va.gov/
VA budget, performance: http://www.va.gov/budget/report/
IOM Coming Home report: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12812
Costs of war: http://bit.ly/y5cLsH
Veterans quick facts: http://www.va.gov/vetdata/Quick_Facts.asp
War casualty reports: http://www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf
Brain Injury Center: http://www.dvbic.org/
___
Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
05/27/2012 13:39 © Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
